A giant statue of the Egyptian goddess Taweret stood in its entirety on the shore of the Island. Jacob lived in a chamber in the statue's pedestal for an unknown amount of time, even after the statue's near total destruction in 1867 by a storm surge that propelled the Black Rock into the head of the statue, smashing it to pieces. The ship's impact preserved only the statue's left calf and foot with its distinctive four toes. The remains of the statue are within view of the Orchid station.

Contents

Description

Statue exterior

Before its destruction, the statue depicted Taweret, the Egyptian goddess of protection, birth and fertility. (Enhanced commentary) Egyptians also considered Tawaret the god of the northern sky and generally depicted her as a humanoid with the head of a hippopotamus. Built of grey stone, the statue stood some 240–250 ft (75 m) in height (about the size of a 15-story office building). (Official Lost Podcast/May 26, 2006) The figure stands one foot slightly forward, looking out to sea with a giant ankh held in each hand. Taweret is depicted as having four toes on each foot.

Pedestal interior

The remains of the statue stand on a hollow pedestal, in which Jacob dwelled for an unknown amount of time. The pedestal can be entered by pushing part of the exterior wall in, opening up to a hallway which in turn leads to a large chamber.

The chamber contains columns, presumably to support the statue's weight, and a fire pit is located at the center of the chamber. During Jacob's time spent living there, he wove a tapestry on one of the walls. A ceiling vent permits a view of the remaining leg of the statue from inside. ("The Incident, Part 1")

History

Egyptians on the Island built the statue sometime well before 1867. (Lost Podcast) The civilization left many other signs of their culture on the island, including hieroglyphs and other structures.

Pre-1867

Jacob

At some point in the early history of the Island, Jacob took up residence in the chamber inside the base of the statue. He appears to have lived there for a considerable period of time, working on a tapestry and making the thread by hand. ("The Incident, Part 1")

Sawyer's Group

Caught in the time flashes, Sawyer's group was briefly transported into an unknown time period sometime prior to the building of the well. From the site of the well, the group glimpsed the back of the giant statue above the trees. Moments later another time flash occurred moving them to 1974. ("LaFleur")

1867

Some time in 1867, Jacob and the Man in Black met on the beach adjacent to the statue, watching as the Black Rock drew near the Island. ("The Incident, Part 1") A massive storm soon blew in, and prisoners aboard the ship caught sight of the statue. One, thinking it the devil, concluded that "El Diablo" guarded the island.

An enormous wave slammed the Black Rock into the head of the statue, depositing the vessel deep in the jungle. The statue was almost completely destroyed, leaving only the base and a single foot behind. ("Ab Aeterno")

DHARMA Initiative

The remnants of the statue are located fairly close to where the Orchid was constructed by the DHARMA Initiative in the 1970's. ("LaFleur") Given its close proximity, it is highly likely the DHARMA Initiative was aware of its existence.

2007

Three years later, after the crash of Ajira Airways Flight 316, an entity claiming to be John Locke approached Richard and demanded to be taken to Jacob, whom he secretly intended to kill. Richard, unaware that this person was not actually Locke, agreed, leading him to the statue's ruins and showing him the entrance to the base, allowing Locke and Ben to enter. Once inside, the entity claiming to be Locke was revealed to be Jacob's ancient enemy, who convinced Ben to stab Jacob and then kicked the dying Jacob into the fire pit, setting him alight and presumably killing him. ("The Incident, Part 1")

Meanwhile, Bram and Ilana, passengers of Ajira Flight 316 who worked for Jacob, attempted to find Jacob at his cabin, but instead found a woven illustration of the statue pinned to the wall by a knife. Realizing that Jacob was likely at the statue instead of in the cabin,

they burned the cabin and traveled to the statue, revealing to Richard that the person inside the statue with Ben and Jacob was not John Locke by showing Richard the body of the real Locke which they, along with several other survivors of Flight 316, had carried around in a large metal case. ("The Incident, Part 1")

The Taweret massacre took place inside the statue a short while after Ilana and Bram arrived with the Ajira crate.

Flash sideways

In the afterlife, the remnants of the statue, along with the rest of the Island, appeared submerged in the ocean in the world created by the collective consciousness of the islanders. An ankh and the left foot of the statue were visible. ("LA X, Part 1")

Wired puzzle

Wired magazine's May 2009 issue, guest-edited by J.J. Abrams, included a Lost-related puzzle on pages 104-105 consisting of two pages of one- and two-digit numbers. When the first page was decrypted using a Vigenère cipher, it read:

“

U S E L E T
T E R S B A
C K W A R D S F
R O M E N D

”

or, "use letters backwards from end".

Counting letters backwards from the end of a section of an article on time travel written by Thorne Plates for the August 2003 issue of Wired, in which the Casimir effect was referenced, yielded the solution to the second page:

“

T H E F O U
R T O E D S
T A T U E I S
T A W E R E T

”

or, "The four-toed statue is Taweret".

Solvers

After a suggestion from Nick Tierce that the numbers represented an alphanumeric code, Steven Bevacqua, a postproduction supervisor for the television series Life, who was the first to solve the issue's master puzzle,[1] decrypted the first half of the Lost sub-puzzle, whereupon Boulder, Colorado musician Jon Leyba solved the second half of the puzzle.[2]

Trivia

Jin, Richard, Jacob and The Man in Black are the only people known to have seen both the ruin and the fully-intact statue. Sun has also seen the statue on two separate occasions though both times she saw the ruins.

In a teleconference with select fans held on April 17, 2008, Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse slightly rectified a misquote of an anecdote previously told by Lindelof at the 2008 Paley Festival. According to Cuse, the true story was that the statue was originally stated to have six toes in the script, but ABC executives mandated that it better have only four toes, which was considered less "weird" than six toes. According to their own words, Lindelof and Cuse didn't mind as long as the statue didn't have five toes. However, sculptor Jim Van Houten gave yet another explanation in the May 9, 2008 video podcast, claiming that the statue's foot was changed from six to four toes because it was hard to tell that it wasn't a regular five-toed foot when it had six toes. Note that in the real world, hippos have four toes, which in hindsight would match with a hippopotamus-headed Taweret. Van Houten also designed the statue used in "The Incident, Part 1."